I Wish Some Legless "Phony" Would Shove A Crutch Up Rush Slimeball's Ass

Iraq War Vet to Limbaugh: You're the Phony
By Jon Soltz
Posted on September 27, 2007, Printed on September 28, 2007

(This post, written by Jon Soltz, originally appeared on The Huffington Post.)

As Media Matters reported today, Rush Limbaugh, on his show said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are "phony soldiers." I'd love for you, Rush, to have me on your show and tell that to me to my face.
Where to begin?
First, in what universe is a guy who never served even close to being qualified to judge those who have worn the uniform? Rush Limbaugh has never worn a uniform in his life -- not even one at Mickey D's -- and somehow he's got the moral standing to pass judgment on the men and women who risked their lives for this nation, and his right to blather smears on the airwaves?
Second, maybe Rush doesn't much care, but the majority of troops on the ground in Iraq, and those who have returned, do not back the President's failed policy. If you go to our "Did You Get the Memo" page at VoteVets.org, there's a good collection of stories, polls, and surveys, which all show American's troops believe we are on the wrong track, not the right one, in Iraq.
Does Rush believe, then, that the majority of the US Armed Forces are "phony?"
Third, the polls and stories don't even take into account the former brass who commanded in Iraq, who are incredibly critical of the Bush administration, and it's steadfast refusal to listen to those commanders on the ground who have sent up warning after warning. Major Generals John Batiste and Paul Eaton left the military and joined VoteVets.org for that very reason.
Does Rush believe that highly decorated Major Generals are "phony soldiers?"
Finally, as Media Matters notes, just recently, members of the 82nd Airborne in Iraq wrote a New York Times op-ed, very critical of the course in Iraq, and suggesting it was time to figure out the exit strategy. Two of them just died. Will Rush call up their grieving parents and tell them that they should stop crying, because they were just "phony soldiers?"
Get the point here, Rush?
You weren't just flat out wrong, you offended a majority of those of us who actually had the courage to go to Iraq and serve, while you sat back in your nice studio, coming up with crap like this.
My challenge to you, then, is to have me on the show and say all of this again, right to the face of someone who served in Iraq. I'll come on any day, any time. Not only will I once again explain why your comments were so wrong, but I will completely school you on why your refusal to seek a way out of Iraq is only aiding al Qaeda and crippling American security.
Ball's in your court.

That last, of course, was a gratuitous jab at the pylonidal Tush's alleged propensity for young Dominican boys. Uncalled for, really. Incivil. Hrmph!

"Climate Crisis Skeptic/Denialist" Lomborg Gets Tongue-laved By Steve Insqueak

Listen here to Insqueak's inept, and credulous, interview.

Then sashay on over to Bouophonia and read a PROPER reply to Lomborg's CorpoRatist codswallop.

The...article reiterates Lomborg's call for economic triage and care rationing; like shrewd investors, we should put our money where it'll earn the highest return good. This sounds reasonable enough, until you remember that a lot of the problems Lomborg's talking about are interrelated, or even synergistic; and that in addition, attempts to remedy them must take projected climate change into account.

As an example, Lomborg mentions the vast number of people who don't have clean drinking water. Water supply and climate, obviously, are pretty intimately connected. Also, improving water safety involves issues like drainage, land use, and the ability of infrastructure to withstand flooding; all these things are likely to be affected by climate change (and we should bear in mind, here, that Lomborg is not a denialist when it comes to AGW).

There's also a larger issue, which is that a good deal of poverty and immiseration in this world is caused, sustained, and sanctified by the free-market orthodoxy that Lomborg champions as Our Only Hope. I'm not exaggerating here; Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus identifies free trade as one of the humanity's four "top priority concerns"; the other three are hunger, AIDS, and malaria.

Free trade's right up there, I think, but perhaps not in the way Lomborg imagines. Like the other three, it is a world-class killer, the cure for which should be foremost in the minds of the worlds' peoples from now on.

What is "45.7-to-1"?

The ratio of Palestinians killed by Israelis to Israelis killed by Palestinians in the past year.

There's a very funny, very smart pod/blog called "MidWestTeenSexShow"

There's no 'embed' screen so just GO TO THE SITE!

Her Kid Was Killed, But That's Not Enough For This Bloody Bitch

Listen to this piece, from Morning Edition, today.
It's about Norm Coleman's waffling in his strident support for the Bushevik ICORP in Iraq. In it, a woman--a self-described war supporter--in effect says because her kid was killed in Iraq, more people's kids need to be killed in Iraq.
I wanted to smack the fucking bint.

I Should Do This More Often

Go over to Hecate's blog, I mean.
First there's always this stringent reminder right there:

You Know It's True
This civilization is killing the planet. They say that one sign of intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns. I’m gonna lay out a pattern here and let’s see if we can recognize it in less than 6,000 years. When you think of the hills and plains of Iraq, do you normally think of cedar forests so thick the sunlight never touches the ground? That’s how it was before. The first written myth of this culture is that of Gilgamesh deforesting that area to make cities. Plato complained that deforestation was drying up springs and destroying the water quality in Greece. The forests of North Africa went down to make the Phoencian and Egyptian navies. We can go north and ask, Where are the lions who were in Greece? Where are the indigenous of Europe? They’ve been massacred, or assimilated—in any case, genocide was perpetrated against them by definition because they’re no longer there. ~Derrick Jensen

Kicks a little ass, that does.
Then there's always poetry, both literal and visual.
I like her way of thinking; though we do not always agree, usually it's not so much in kind as in degree.
She started her blog about the same time as I started mine. She' gotten like (deservedly) 10 times more hits.
It's a neat site, is all I'm sayin'.

Billy Graham: Another Corpse Into Whose Dead Mouth I'd Gladly Defecate

I am really enjoying these folks, at The Peoples Voice dot Org.:

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.” - Stendhal
"The propaganda machine of the Evangelical Christian Right will soon be in counter attack mode. One of its darling preachers is about to take it on the proverbial chin. The Rev. Billy Graham, who has created a multimillion dollar media empire, that a Rupert Murdock would envy, is the subject of a shocking expose’ due out on Nov. 15, 2007. It’s entitled, “The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire.” The author is Cecil Bothwell. He hails from Asheville, North Carolina and is an award winning investigative reporter. Bothwell’s unflattering portrait of Rev. Graham shows him as a wily warmonger and a lackey for the Establishment. He describes Rev. Graham as a public figure who “undermined the Founders’ skeptical Deism and sought to rebrand the U.S. as a Christian nation, [and] its armies [as] the rightful instruments of [a] Christian crusade and empire.”

Billy Graham, Dominionist motherfucker, par excellence! Nixon welcomed the greasy, anti-American, anti-democratic/theocratic shitheel into the ShiteHouse first. He might as well set up a fucking office. I guess he's not dead yet, mores the pity.

Anent Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (NYTimes)

The Money Quote:

Mr. Craig returned to the Senate last week. One of the first votes he cast was to support a Republican effort to block court access for detainees, people who have not gotten to see a judge or enter a plea at all.
The best thing that Mr. Craig has going for him may be that his case is being heard by a Minnesota state court, not a federal one. The last kind of judge Mr. Craig would want to appear before is one with the harsh legal philosophy he and his Republican colleagues have been foisting on the rest of us.

by Adam Cohen, Sept 24, 07...

...With Pitchforks, Torches, Tar & Feathers

Via TruthOut:
Bob Herbert writes for The New York Times:

"I applaud the thousands of people, many of them poor, who traveled from around the country to protest in Jena, La., last week. But what I'd really like to see is a million angry protesters marching on the headquarters of the National Republican Party in Washington. Enough is enough. Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is.
The G.O.P. has spent the last 40 years insulting, disenfranchising and otherwise stomping on the interests of black Americans. Last week, the residents of Washington, D.C., with its majority black population, came remarkably close to realizing a goal they have sought for decades - a voting member of Congress to represent them."

Cuz, you know, the Southern Strategy coulda meant anything, right?

All Y'all, Please, G'won'n TELL Me, AGAIN, How Dick Vader DID NOT KNOW

everything about IX/XI except mebbe (and I mean 'mebbe') the exact dates and flight numbers.
Cheney Mulled Israeli Strike on Iran: Newsweek
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092407B.shtml

Reuters reports, "Vice President Dick Cheney had at one point considered asking Israel to launch limited missile strikes at an Iranian nuclear site to provoke a retaliation, Newsweek magazine reported on Sunday."

The news comes amid reports that Israel launched an air strike against Syria this month over a suspected nuclear site.

Citing two unidentified sources, Newsweek said former Cheney Middle East adviser David Wurmser told a small group several months ago that Cheney was considering asking Israel to strike the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz.

A military response by Iran could give Washington an excuse to then launch airstrikes of its own, Newsweek said.

Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser of the neoconservative Hudson Institute think tank, told Newsweek the claims were untrue.

Wurmser left Cheney's office last month, the magazine reported. The steady departure of neoconservative hawks from the administration has also helped tilt the balance against war, it said.

Washington has been pursuing diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to alter its nuclear program. It has refused to take military options off the table, even U.S. resources are taxed by having 169,000 troops in Iraq.

Although some intelligence sources say Iran is years away from nuclear capability, Israel believes that military action may be necessary as early as 2008, Newsweek said.

Israel has declined to comment on the reported air strike, while Syria has denied receiving North Korean nuclear aid and said it could retaliate for the September 6 violation of its territory.

This, my friends, is real-politik as Kissinger knew it. Heinrich would be very proud. Cheney's on the original list of the PNACabal, the guys who famously bragged that all they needed was the next Pearl Harbor to cover their fascistic scams. These guys treated the whole COUNTRY of Iraq like Mengele treated his "patients." They're a buncha technocratic sadists wandering the wards of a hospital with the inexhaustible cattle-prod of FREIHEIT!!!

This Approaches Literature...

Verbatim, an e-mail received today. It's a variation on a wide-spread scam motif called, by the Intertubes cogniscenti, the "Nigerian Letter". Nigerians, apparently, are endlessly inventive, and USers, apparently, never cease to find ways to be fleeced.

Really, this is dang near Faulknerian...

Greetings.

As you read this, don't feel sorry for me, because it is the destiny of everyman to die someday. I am Sulaiman Balaa a naturalised Briton by birth and a business merchant based in the United Kingdom. I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer. It has defiled all forms of medical treatment, and right now I have only about a few months to live, according to medical experts. I regret that I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone (not even myself), but my trade. Though I am very well to do, I was never open handed; I was always hostile to people and regarded them like they never had hopes of becoming as successful as myself. Now I know that there is a lot more to life than just prosperity.

I believe that when I am given a second chance to come to this world, I would live my life a different way from how I have lived it. Now that death is eminent, I have willed and given most of my belonging to immediate and extended family members, as well as a few close friends. I want Allah to be merciful to me and accept my soul. Hence I have decided to support charity work; this is what I want to be remembered for. So far, I have been able to reach out to a few charity organizations in the Singapore, Algeria and Malaysia. Now that my health has deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore.

I once asked members of my family to aid me in giving of alms to those organizations catering for the less privileged in Bulgaria and Pakistan; they refused and kept the resources to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contempt with what I have left for them. The last of my belonging which no one knows of, is the deposit of Four million US dollars that I have in a safe keeping company abroad, which I will want you to secure and bestow to charity organizations. Please endeavour to reply me. For your time and devotion, I have set aside a tenth of this for you.
Allah be with you.

Sulaiman Balaa.

A perfect gem of "eminent" mortality and moral redemption. You could send it in to a short-story contest with some expectation of being seriously regarded, lexical confusions and all.

My Pal, Mike K, Has Reached His Limit

Mike's a soft-spoken, intelligent, introspective fella, a vet like me, and an old 'dirty, fucking hippie,' who usually controls his temper.
The gibbering, simpering, swaggering, strutting, smirking Chimp's 'outrage' at the MOveOn ad--"General BetrayUs?"--broke through his normal reserve.

I don't usually Swear, but in this case.......
Quotes
"I was incredulous at first and then became mad." -- Zippy the CiC, on the "General Betray Us" ad.

Hey shithead, go fuck yourself!

In 1996, when Clinton was president, your party sold t-shirts that said, "Where is Lee Harvey Owswald when we need him?" so fuck you.

In 1998, your party impeached our president during war time, so fuck you.

In 2000, you said McCain betrayed his fellow POWs in Vietnam, so fuck you.

Also in 2000, you mocked Gore for going to Vietnam when you went AWOL, so fuck you.

In 2002, your party morphed Max Cleland into Osama, so fuck you.

At your party convention, assholes mocked John Kerry's Purple Hearts, so fuck you.

Does your precious General Betrayus have any shrapnel in his ass like John Kerry does?

You don't give a flying goddamn fuck about the dignity of the soldiers.

Hell you lied 3,800 of them into an early grave to steal Iraq's oil, so fuck you.

U.S. military cemetery running out of space:
A Kansas military cemetery has run out of space after the burial of another casualty of the Iraq war. "We are full," said Alison Kohler, spokeswoman for the Fort Riley U.S. Army post, home of the 1st Infantry Division.
Fort Riley can bury bodies on top of other bodies if family members want to share a plot, said Kohler.

Oh perfect!
Bush is killing so many soldiers they're stacking them up under the ground?
And you have a problem with MoveOn.org's ad?

Go fuck yourself, you AWOL, walking-disaster, murderer of good soldiers..

I just can't take any more!!!
Mike

The Chimp got MAD?
I have difficulty expressing how mad I am. Mad enough to wish with every corpuscle of my being that the grinning Simian's head winds up on the end of a fucking pike.

No, no, silly, the OTHER kind...

The "Shock Doctrine": The "REAL" Culture War's Ultimate Weapon

The crises change, but the right-wing fucktards' solutions are ALWYS the same. Milton Friedman was the guru of the movement, after Hayek died. They were all together at the University of Chicago: Hayek, Friedman, Leo Strauss, Richard "Dick' Posner, the whole neo-lib pantheon has its roots there.
You NEED to listen to this. Naomi Klein has an incredibly beautiful mind...It is in six parts. I'm gonna post Part one and link the rest.
Part Two, 2222...
Part Three, 3333...
Part Four, 44444...
Part Five, 55555....
Part Six, 66666....
Naomi Klein's a national treasure; unfortunately (for we USers anyway) she's Canadian. It must be something in the water.

You Don't Win Arguments WITH Fascists, You Win Wars AGAINST Them.

My new political maxim.
Like the "Real Estate" Maxim--"Buy Low; Sell High--this is an inviolable truth.
Like the Family Maxim of Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
This is as true:
"You do NOT win arguments with Fascists; you win wars against them."
Scribe that on my surf-board.

Israel, of ALL the World's Nations, Ought To Abjure 'Collective Punishment."

But they don't:
In order to fend off the political challenge of the REAL Likudniks of Netanyahu, the weak, pseudo-Likud "Kadima" Govt has declared the Gaza Strip to be a “hostile entity” and is actively limiting supplies of fuel and electricity to the Territory; this is unquestionably an act of collective punishment by Israel. The Kadima-led coalition government has also said it will further restrict the transfer of goods and people in and out of Gaza. The moves are part of an escalating offensive against Gaza’s one-and-a-half million residents that could culminate in an armed attack. Can you say "ethnic cleansing?" I knew you could.

Ramming the religious 'State of Israel' down the throats of the indigenes and their neighbors in 1948 arguably has turned out to have been one of the biggest blunders of the entire 20th Century. Up there with the Treaty of Versailles, and the bombing of Nagasaki.
Remember the Stern Gang?

When Did The Concerns Of The Congress Pass From "The Citizen" To "The Consumer"?

Whenever it was, the character of the American Republic irremediably changed, and for the inexpressably worse, on the first occasion that some Representative of the People arose in the Congress and presented her or himself as speaking in behalf of the "American consumer," instead of the "American citizen," and NOBODY arose to swat her/him down. It had to have been sometime in the '50s. It's been all down-hill since then.
We have been sooooo fucked for sooooo long that, I think, we've lost the capacity, as a people, to register on a conscious level, how truly fucked we are.

Nearly $100 BILLION in War Contracts Under Investigation

Spencer Ackerman on Muckraker reports:

So what defense contract in Iraq didn't involve a kickback? What contract was awarded through competitive bidding? As Pentagon investigators conduct an unprecedented review into corruption in the department's Iraq contracting, it's a rare bid that wasn't crooked.
Yesterday, Congress learned that $6 billion worth of contracts are under criminal review. That's right -- criminal:

Military officials said Thursday that contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan — including food, water and shelter — were under review by criminal investigators, double the amount the Pentagon had previously disclosed.

In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for American soldiers and matériel for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities, the officials said.

Taken together, the figures, provided by the Pentagon in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, represent the fullest public accounting of the magnitude of a widening government investigation into bid-rigging, bribery and kickbacks by members of the military and civilians linked to the Pentagon’s purchasing system.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) called DOD's procurement process "a culture of corruption," an assessment that appears to represent the bipartisan consensus. Yet the Pentagon's deputy inspector general said the contracting corruption was attributable to "isolated incidents." Yes, $6 billion worth of isolated incidents.

There's more.

What Is There About This Image

THIS ONE
that has brought hundreds of visitors to my site, like lemmings?
I found it inexplicable that somewhere around 300-400 hits on my site in the last four days, would have all been referred by that google search.
I half-way suspected something like a google scavenger hunt.

Wish in one hand and poop in the other and sniff which one gets stinky: The Oprah Solution

IF Oprah Winfrey had a fucking curly chinchilla of courage, integrity, compassion or social conscience, she take a couple of thousandths of the BILLION PLUS dollars she's accepted from the White/racist power structure of the CorpoRat Media, and she'd buy every single stick of property owned by Black folks in Jena, Louisiana, and provide a way for those poor people to escape that racist fucking swamp. The MINIMUM she should do is to endow scolarships to good schools for each of the kids the thug/racist pigs in Jena are trying to use as object lessons on 'know your place, kneegrow."

But she's too sold-out, too complicit, too gutless, to afraid of alienating mebbe one or two advertizers.

New Host on "The View," Sherri (something) Does NOT Believe Evolution, Cannot Say If World Flat Or Round

From Alternet, scroll down.
Here's the clip from YouTube:

Sherri's world ain't round, but it is FUCKIN FAT! From the Alternet blerb:

The latest mind-boggling exchange occurred between comedian Sherri Shepherd and her other co-hosts, including Whoopi Goldberg. After refusing to accept evolution, (Huckabee, we've found you a running mate!), Goldberg asked Shepherd whether she thought the world was flat (trying to make a point about value of scientific evidence) and Shepherd claimed she didn't know and if her kids ever asked her she'd have to take them to the library to "look it up." Check out the video to your right for more.

I guess drooling, stupid, vapid, moronic, fat-headed dumb-fux need a voice on TV, too. Sherri certainly qualifies!